WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko’s recent false attacks on Russian media are part of a broader US psychological operation to manipulate public opinion in the region and to eventually effect regime change in Moscow, analysts told Sputnik.

Poroshenko told the Madrid newspaper El Pais in an interview published earlier in the day that Russia through RT television and Sputnik was spreading fake news about Ukraine, the US election, Brexit, Catalonia and Crimea to create instability. Poroshenko also rejected Russian news reports that there was a civil war occurring in Ukraine and claimed, without providing any proof, that there were 60,000 Russian troops on Ukraine territory.

PSYOPS American-Style

The US State Department has been reluctant to criticize Kiev for cracking down on Russian journalists including last month after Ukrainian Security Services staff broke into the office of RIA Novosti Ukraine in Kiev and detained reporter Kirill Vyshinsky.

US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert told reporters that they hope Kiev authorities abide by the law but said Washington also understands Ukraine’s concerns about Russian "propaganda."

Former US Army Major and historian Todd Pierce told Sputnik on Tuesday that the US government or any US media outlets were unlikely to have any objections with Poroshenko’s comments because the remarks support a broader anti-Russian agenda and because free press is no longer an American value.

"Since 2001 US corporate press has completely given itself over to the US government’s ‘Perception Management,’ meaning a constant ‘conditioning the battlefield’ in the words of the Rand Corporation," Pierce said.

For example, Pierce explained, Poroshenko accusing Russian state media of triggering instability as his own government prosecutes journalists is what US psychological operatives call "projection," a cognitive dissonance of sorts that distracts from the truth and deflects attention to reinforce other ready-made false tropes and narratives.

In fact, the Ukrainian president was not required to produce any evidence to support his false and unsubstantiated claims for Washington or the mainstream American media, Pierce observed.

The media in neither the United States nor in the European Union was interested in reporting accurately on the suppression of press freedom in Ukraine because they followed official positions on whipping up distrust and conflict with Russia instead, Pierce warned.

"They don’t want to as inciting war against Russia is deemed in our [Western] 'interests,’" he said.

US Silence Deafening

The US government would not correct Poroshenko’s false and unsubstantiated accusations and would continue to ignore the significant influence of neo-Nazi movements in Ukraine, American University in Moscow President and Founder Professor Edward Lozansky told Sputnik.

"I think that as long as neo-Nazis help in exerting pressure on Russia one shouldn't expect criticism of them coming from the official Washington," Lozansky said.

Poroshenko’s very government was the outcome of fabrications and US spin, he said. The 2014 riots, for example, were falsely portrayed by the United States as a popular uprising, Lozansky explained.

"The whole Maidan Revolution had nothing to do with freedom, democracy or helping the Ukrainian economy," he said. "It was all about the geopolitical weakening of Russia without any regards to the interests or sacrifices of ordinary Ukrainians."

The anti-Russian bias in the US and Canadian governments and their support of Nazi forces in Ukraine was a continuation of notorious policies that both countries had adopted to protect Nazi war criminals after World War II, Lozansky pointed out.

"There is nothing new. Back in the Soviet times the US and Canada provided refuge to many Ukrainian Nazi collaborators who could be useful in the potential conflicts with the USSR," he said.

In late May, Kiev introduced sanctions against Rossiya Segodnya Information Agency, which Sputnik belongs to, and RIA Novosti Ukraine portal. Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT broadcaster and Sputnik news agency, hit back at misinformation allegations in an April interview to the Swedish SVT channel. Simonyan said that Western media often used every opportunity they had to show Russia in a bad light.

Russian officials have repeatedly refuted allegations of Moscow meddling in other countries' internal affairs, pointing out that these claims have remained unsubstantiated.

Hello,
!

We are committed to protecting your personal information and we have updated our Privacy Policy to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a new EU regulation that went into effect on May 25, 2018.

Please review our Privacy Policy. It contains details about the types of data we collect, how we use it, and your data protection rights.

Since you already shared your personal data with us when you created your personal account, to continue using it, please check the box below:

I agree to the processing of my personal data for the purpose of creating a personal account on this site, in compliance with the Privacy Policy.

If you do not want us to continue processing your data, please click here to delete your account.

promotes the use of narcotic / psychotropic substances, provides information on their production and use;

contains links to viruses and malicious software;

is part of an organized action involving large volumes of comments with identical or similar content ("flash mob");

“floods” the discussion thread with a large number of incoherent or irrelevant messages;

violates etiquette, exhibiting any form of aggressive, humiliating or abusive behavior ("trolling");

doesn’t follow standard rules of the English language, for example, is typed fully or mostly in capital letters or isn’t broken down into sentences.

The administration has the right to block a user’s access to the page or delete a user’s account without notice if the user is in violation of these rules or if behavior indicating said violation is detected.